


A Better View of the Rising Moon

by lovetincture



Series: Way Down in the Everyone Gets There [6]
Category: Adam (2009), Charlie Countryman (2013), Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Extended Universe - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Mental Instability, Murder Family 2.0, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-01-05 11:43:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21207968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: Will remembers things.He remembers living with Adam in the woods of Virginia, dog hair and squabbles and macaroni-and-cheese kisses. He remembers a crooked yellow cabin in the sweet Pennsylvanian grass, Hannibal guarding him as he dreamed and consented to forget. He remembers Abigail in Italy. He remembers dying in New Orleans. He remembers children.He can see a hundred lives through the veil, bright and dark, wonderful and terrible. They clatter together and burn him to ash. Is it madness or memory if no one believes you?





	1. Chapter 1

_Since my house burned down,_  
_I now own a better view __of the rising moon_

Adam and Will are sitting on the beach. They do that, sometimes. Alone. After dinner when everyone drifts apart, turning aside to their own solitary pursuits. Nigel goes running, as if he could run far or fast enough to shake off the shackles this family has laid on him. Hannibal plays the harpsichord.

Adam and Will, they sit and they watch. Stationary objects in a world gone mad.

“Hannibal told me you dream about me,” Will says. “Does it happen often?”

“Every night.”

Will nods. The sun turns the ocean murder gold, spreads light along its surface. “I have nightmares too.”

“What do you dream about?” Adam asks.

“You.”

“You have nightmares about me,” Adam says, like he’s testing the idea, tasting the words in his mouth. “How could I possibly scare you?”

“You don’t. It’s not like that. The dreams are… nice. We’re happy.” He draws a nothing-shape in the sand with his foot. “We live together with dogs. Hannibal is in jail. I’m… well, I’m not _normal,_ I guess, but I’m better than you’ve ever seen me. I don’t hurt you. It’s just nice.”

Adam wrinkles his nose. “I don’t like dogs.”

Will laughs. “Yeah, that’s what you say in the dreams, too. You like mine though—this dog I had back in Virginia, his name was Winston. Fluffy thing, brown with spots. The most loyal dog you could ever ask for, you like him.”

“He looked like Hurry?”

“Kind of, yeah. He was a little smaller, but Hurry reminds me of him.”

“I liked him?”

“You did. He loved you too, followed you everywhere—even into the bathroom, even though that drove you crazy. Most days I think he liked you better than me.”

The sun sinks lower in the sky. Far away, a dog barks.

“So if the dreams are so good, why do you call them nightmares?”

“Because of the way I feel when I wake up, I guess,” Will says. He feels the urge to hug his knees to his chest, and he ignores it. “Lonely. Heartbroken. Like there’s the shape of an absence where a limb used to be, and some essential part of me is missing.”

“They’re just dreams,” Adam says. “None of that is real. We never loved each other like that.”

“That’s what Hannibal says.” Will falls silent, looking out over the waves. The ocean is the color of blood. “How about you?”

“What about me?”

“When you dream of me, are the dreams terrible?”

“They used to be.” The waves clap like thunder. They crash against the shore in a fine spray of foam. “They used to be awful. You’d touch me. Hurt me. I screamed and cried, and it made you smile.”

“And now?”

Adam turns back to the ocean. The dying sun paints his cheeks in vivid orange light, gilds them and makes his lips and eyelashes shine. “They’re the same,” he says finally. “You still hurt me, but now I like it.”

“That’s the hardest part, isn’t it? Liking it.”

Adam bites his thumbnail. “Yeah. It is.”

* * *

Hannibal had spoken to him once about holes in the floors of the mind, danger that waits. It’s currently a metaphor that highlights their differences more than their similarities. A hole in the floor implies a certain structural integrity—that there is more floor than hole to be had.

That isn’t true in Will’s case. It hasn’t been true for a long time. Most days it feels like his mind is made entirely of holes, a vast limitless cavern waiting to swallow him whole. That isn’t frightening except in the most abstract of ways. He isn’t really sure who he is anymore—what self would be sacrificed to the god of madness when he’s one big vacancy after another—so it’s hardly a credulous threat.

He’s alone now. Alone entirely for the first time in his life, no other minds pressing in on his. It’s more terrible than he thought it would be. There are darker spots, spaces bleak and barren that smell of sulfur and gunshots. He wonders if it isn’t Adam creeping into his memory palace again, swapping black holes for stags. People used to live there, before they were cut away by the blunt razor of pharmaceuticals, scattered to the wind like paper dolls. One is shaped like Abigail, another like Molly. He can’t talk to them, not anymore, but he can put his hand in the space their absence made.

When he’s curled around Adam, arms full of bony limbs and knobby knees, face full of sweet-smelling curls, everything feels a little less like dying.

* * *

Will hates the pills that Hannibal gives him. They make him feel fuzzy and slow. They blunt all his sharp edges.

Of course he stops taking them, whenever and however he can.

Hannibal gives them to him at meal times, conspicuously seated beside Will, watching his mouth carefully. Hannibal has always taken a keen, voyeuristic interest in watching people enjoy his food, but this is something else. They both know that if Will were to stand up to go to the bathroom, he would spit the pill into the trash can, and they both know that Hannibal would stop him. The force and indignity of it would at least be honest, but of course Hannibal won’t give him that.

He does this instead. He refills Will’s glass whenever it gets low (water, not wine; it wouldn’t do to mix alcohol with Haldol). He leans in and touches the inside of Will’s wrist, every inch the devoted lover. He pretends not to watch what Will does with his napkin. He pretends not to check it when they’re done eating. This is all somehow worse.

Will tries to pocket the pills on the inside of his cheek, but Hannibal is never one to rush a meal. Dinner is achingly slow, and bitter poison seeps into his mouth all the while. Inevitably he ends up biting through the hard, chalky tablet, noxious and foul. Inevitably he buys himself another day of muzzy inertia.

He doesn’t gag on it. His face doesn’t so much as twitch. He doesn’t give Hannibal the satisfaction.

Later, he tries to bring it up in the bathroom, sticking his fingers down his throat while Abigail sits on the counter and kicks her legs against the cabinet door. She waits until he’s done puking, scoots to the side so he can grab the mouthwash and clear the taste of bile from his mouth. She wrinkles her nose when he spits in the sink right beside her pretty floral dress.

“You’re not good at this,” she says. She holds out her hand and sighs. “Here, let me show you.”

Will opens the medicine cabinet and takes down a bottle marked with a name no one in this house owns. He taps out a pill and hands it to Abigail, who sticks it on her tongue, candy-bright against the soft, pink muscle. She closes her lips, does something quick and complicated with her mouth, and when she opens it again, the pill is gone. It stays gone even when she lifts her tongue and sticks it out, making a sound that Hannibal would consider rude but that Will thinks is funny.

“Tada.”

She spits the pill into her hand and gives it back, spit-wet and shiny, and Will flushes it down the toilet.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” he asks.

She shrugs. “They tried to give me meds at Port Haven. I never took them.”

Abigail grins wickedly, and Will smiles back. It feels like they’re sharing a secret.

* * *

He has the strangest sensation of waking up even though he’s already awake. He jerks upright in his chair and gasps in a heaving breath.

_If this is what resurrection feels like, I wouldn_ _’t wish it on anyone._

“Are you all right?” Hannibal asks.

Will looks around the room and doesn’t answer. It probably doesn’t matter.

“Will?”

Hannibal’s voice fades so prettily into the background, like a wall of noise.

_“Will?”_

He looks around for Adam, but he can’t find him anywhere. Hannibal is the only one in the house. His footsteps echo on the tile, and Hannibal sighs like he’s tired.

He calls for Adam. He calls for Abigail.

No one answers, and it occurs to him that he doesn’t know when he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Since my house burned down / I now own a better view / of the rising moon" is a haiku by Mizuta Masahide.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's gonna be a weird ride, y'all.

He’s before. He’s pretty sure this is before. _Before _casts strange echoes that _now_ doesn’t, like shadows on the wall. The particular strangeness that comes from feeling the reverberations of yourself in a place. He doesn’t know if this is his before or someone else’s.

He doesn’t have time to dwell on it. Hannibal brings him tea and sits him down on the couch. The windows are open, and the walls are stuccoed. A warm breeze wafts in, and Will smells the ocean. He might murmur ‘thank you.’

The heat of the tea is cloying in the humid afternoon air, but he wraps his fingers around porcelain anyway, lets the bite of pain call his mind back down familiar roads. Back to here, where they are: Costa Rica, now. He hangs his awareness from it like an anchor. Time is less important than place.

The steam rises from the mug, wet and herbal, and Will sucks it into his lungs. He burns his tongue on the water.

“Do you remember Adam?” Will asks.

“Yes,” Hannibal says. “He and Nigel left on their [trip](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21668167/chapters/52216159) last night. Do you remember?”

There’s only a point in lying if it’ll get you what you want. Will says, “No, I guess I forgot.”

He sips his tea. Hannibal isn’t having any, and an old fear makes him wonder if Hannibal’s poisoned it. The fear is easily extinguished, but not before it has the chance to take root, to sink its tendrils in his heart and mind. He looks to the door and wonders how fast he could run.

_Not fast enough—_he remembers that. Hannibal is inside him wherever he goes, his constant guard and companion. It rankles as much as it soothes.

“How long will they be gone?” he asks.

He hates asking. He hates being meted out bits of reality like sweets, hates when Hannibal knows things that he doesn’t.

“They didn’t say. I’m not terribly sure that they know themselves.”

“Adam does,” Will says without having to think it over. He knows Adam—has known him for a lifetime, this one and that. “He’s proving something.”

“To who?” Hannibal asks, cocking his head with that keen, bird-of-prey gaze that makes Will feel like carrion.

He shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. To himself, to me. To you or Nigel. He’ll come back when he’s done it.”

He is sure of it in a way he can’t explain. He wants Hannibal to demand an explanation. Wants him to point out that Will had no idea that Adam was gone fifteen minutes ago. It’s very nearly worse that he doesn’t acknowledge it. That he never acts like Will is as broken as he is.

Hannibal is unfailingly patient and kind, and Will hates that too.

He misses the parts of Hannibal he no longer gets to see—the parts that gutted him in a beautiful kitchen, that tried to crack his head open like a walnut to see what was inside. He wonders if Hannibal still wants to see at all. What he’s left with feels like a paltry piece of the whole.

Will sets the empty teacup aside. He _does_ say thank you this time—he definitely does; he makes sure he remembers it, marks it like dogearing a page in his mind.

He reaches for Hannibal with hands still warm from the cup, pulling them together and closing the distance.

“Did you get lost again?” Hannibal asks. No reproach, never that.

_Judge me,_ Will thinks.

“Distract me,” he says.

Hannibal tips Will’s head back with deliciously rough fingers in his hair. He kisses along Will’s jaw and makes him forget.

* * *

This isn’t happening now. It echoes like a memory, and he isn’t sure it’s his. He doesn’t remember it like this, not with this veneer of disbelief and confusion.

They’re having sex, and that feels like it matters. Will twists in Hannibal’s grip, quicksilver and lithe. He touches Hannibal’s face. He stares.

“Monster, you look so human. What happened to your [claws](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21287546)?” He meets Hannibal’s eyes and touches his fingers to them, pressing into the hollows of their sockets in a way that feels vaguely threatening. “Your fire burned out.”

His voice takes on a breathy, high quality Hannibal has never heard. He sounds wondering. Young. Hannibal suddenly has the strange impression of being in the room with someone entirely different. It’s gripping and repellent all at once.

He holds Will close and kisses him all over, and Will is confused but allows it.

“I became human for you,” he says.

It’s true in any universe. The colors blend, darken and blur. Sorrow is poured over everything like resin. It smells like snowmelt and antler velvet. It doesn’t belong to him.

Will doesn’t remember being sad. Not now, not yet. That came later. After. Oceans of sorrow, just for him. But first, this:

“I want children,” he says.

Hannibal’s hand stills where he’s been cutting leeks to saute for their supper. He rocks the blade through the fragrant allium again, lets the steady rhythm of steel on wood soothe him.

“Would you like to adopt?”

It’s something Hannibal could manage, certainly. He has the funds to make such a thing a possibility. There are channels he could investigate. Such a thing wouldn’t be advisable given Will’s mental state, but there’s never harm in asking. He’d like to know what Will wants.

He’s taken aback by the dark look Will gives him, one entirely too venomous for their current conversation.

“You know that’s not what I mean,” Will says.

Hannibal knows no such thing. Lately his conversations with Will make him feel as though he’s reading a book with every third word missing. Like he’s losing a game whose rules only Will knows.

He doesn’t enjoy the feeling.

He sets the knife down perfectly parallel to the cutting board. “What do you mean, Will?”

Will takes the lack of a blade in his hand as an invitation, perhaps, or he’s simply grown tired of waiting. He’s on Hannibal in an instant, crowding him against the kitchen sink. (The kitchen here is so lamentably small. Hannibal preferred the one they had back in Pittsburgh.) He nips along the side of Hannibal’s neck, worrying the tendon there with his teeth.

“Get me pregnant,” Will says into his skin. “Give me a baby.”

Most of Hannibal is engaged in the present moment, thrilling in the feeling of Will’s hands on him again. Part of him thinks about dinner, and another part is concerned about the state of Will’s mind. He folds those parts neatly and tucks them away. They’ll keep in drawers in his memory palace.

He’s here now instead. Fully, madly, completely. He unbuttons Will’s shirt with steady, sure fingers and pushes it off his shoulders and to the floor. He licks his way into Will’s mouth and tastes stale coffee, tastes Will.

“You owe me this,” Will pants when he breaks away. “After everything you’ve taken away, you do.”

Hannibal doesn’t disagree. It just so happens they mean that in different ways. He owes Will this and more.

“Anything you want, _mylimasis,”_ he says. He brushes the back of his hand over Will’s bare stomach, fascinated by the way Will shivers at his touch. “I’d be honored if you carried my child.”

Will shivers again, and Hannibal covers Will’s body with his own. Will steers them to the bedroom, takes Hannibal’s clothes off with hands that aren’t gentle nor polite. But then Hannibal wouldn’t want them to be.

They fall onto the bed. They fuck face to face. Will stutters and groans and grinds himself onto Hannibal.

It’s not a hardship. There are worse things in life. He rubs his hands over the smooth skin of Will’s flank, the delicate pulse at his throat. He clamps his teeth around Will’s neck and exults in the ragged groan it drags from him. He bites down harder, holding him in place.

Will is quiet, after. He’s gone pliant and soft, and he doesn’t turn away when Hannibal gathers him in his arms. He allows himself to be held. He cups a hand protectively over his belly and keeps smiling at Hannibal. Will kisses him over and over, feather-light kisses across his face. Hannibal basks in the warmth of such easy affection and allows himself to imagine that Will means it.

This was such a nice moment, Will thinks. It’s a shame it ended so spectacularly badly.


	3. Chapter 3

The thing about living through hell is that it doesn't require any particular act of will. A person can live through anything without any effort on their part. A beating heart, breathing lungs—it's all horribly, irrevocably automatic.

Will goes to sleep. He wakes up. Time flows around him treacle-slow and about as heavy. It clings to him, weighing him down.

When he first sees Alana, he assumes she’s a figment of his imagination.

There’s no other explanation for the fact that she’s standing in his kitchen, barefoot and looking mad as a viper. For a second, Will loses his place—what day is it? What year?

Her vividly angry face softens for just a second when she recognizes him. Surely that can’t be real.

“Will?”

Her voice is so familiar. Will’s face twitches in something that wants to be a smile but lands somewhere in the vicinity of a grimace. Alana’s red-painted lips dip into a deeper frown, an echo of the expression on his own face. He thinks mind control, thinks infection and poison—what he is. What they are.

“Hello, Alana.”

When is he again?

“How have you been?” she asks.

“You know.” Smile like breaking glass. “I’ve been better. Been worse too, I guess.” It’s incongruous, this conversation. Slippery and hard to hold. “Are we friends, then? After everything he did to you, I’m surprised. Unless it hasn’t happened yet.”

Alana’s forehead creases in a familiar expression of concern.

“Hannibal told me you’ve been having some trouble.” She keeps the kitchen island between them, he notices, when she speaks. “Do you want to talk about it?”

That helps, actually. It really does. It places the conversation in the chronology. _It__’s 1:52 p.m. I’m in Uvita, Costa Rica, and my name is Will Graham._

He bares his teeth in a grimace that isn’t trying to be anything but a grimace. He turns his back to Alana, trusting her. Trusting her not to put a knife in his back, trusting her to still be there when he turns around—trusting her more than he should, really, whether she’s solid or ghost.

The Alana he knew wasn’t a killer, but that was before; the Will she knew wasn’t a killer either, and look at them now.

He takes down two glasses from the cabinet and fills them with ice from the refrigerator door. He fills them both with water at the tap, then slides one across the counter to her. He doesn’t miss the way she flinches back from him, just a little, but then he can’t exactly blame her, either.

For whatever it’s worth, she does not stick a knife in his back.

“He called in a second opinion,” Will says, and he sounds so tired.

“Kidnapped, actually.” She spares a wry smile for him—they both smile—and it feels almost like old times, just for a second.

“How are Margot and Morgan?”

“We’re not here to talk about them,” Alana says with all the finality of a door slamming shut. She smooths down her blouse, and it does nothing to help the deep wrinkles travel has pressed into the fabric. “Let’s talk about you. How are you feeling today, Will?”

Just like that, the illusion cracks and shatters. It’s not like old times. It’s nothing like that. They are exactly here—victim, captor. Hatred, resentment. Will can feel it simmering beneath the surface now. It feels like his own. He breathes it in, breathes in deep. Alana’s pokerface is excellent, all the same.

“Can you not do that?” he looks at her, desperate, pleading for understanding he does not deserve. _Just this once. Please. Throw me a lifeline._ “Can you not talk to me like I’m some kind of invalid? Like I’m _crazy.__”_

She purses her lips, calculating. Will wonders where Hannibal is. Not far, surely. Alana’s the type who would run.

“Should we go sit down somewhere more comfortable?” she asks. It doesn’t really sound like a question.

They take their coffee into the living room—black for Will, a splash of milk for Alana. He sits on the couch, and she sits in the armchair, and they stare each other down. Alana stares him down; Will takes her in at the edges—sleek black hair, crisp red lips, pale expanse of throat, soft and vulnerable.

“I hear two other people live here?” Alana says, taking in the room with sharp, clinical eyes. “You and Hannibal didn’t strike me as the roommate type.”

Will closes his eyes and studies the inside of his eyelids, assessing. He wonders how much Hannibal’s told her—how much she’s guessed. The word _roommate_ strikes a sour note in the intricate ballet of their conversation.

“Adam's away on a trip,” Will says. He can't quite bring himself to meet her eyes.

Alana crosses her legs, end over end. There could be a therapy couch between them for how this feels, a bland, beige carpet with bland, inoffensive art on the walls, all of it intentionally designed to say ‘This is a safe place. Lay your burdens here.’ There could be, but there's not. Dogs prance between them, excited at the prospect of a new friend in the house. Mia comes over to say hello, sniffing and licking at Alana’s palm, hoping for treats.

Alana leans in. “Who's Adam, Will? Tell me about him.”

“Tell me about Margot,” Will counters. He's not inclined to give up his secrets, and right now, Adam feels like a secret. Something to be hidden close to his chest and kept safe from prying eyes.

Alana purses her lips. Will can feel her deciding how much to give him. He wonders what Hannibal’s got on her—Margot, probably. Margot and her son. He can see her weighing the relative danger of the two of them—which is better, which is worse.

“Margot is fine,” Alana says. “She’s made some big changes to the Verger slaughterhouses recently—humane and sustainable are the new buzzwords.”

Will nods, unable to get the sound of screaming pigs out of his head for a moment.

Alana tries for a smile. “We got a dog.”

Will’s mouth pulls up at the edges. “What kind of dog?”

“A golden retriever. Morgan loves him. He’s been a good friend for Applesauce—seems to make her feel young again.”

“Puppies will do that.”

His smile falls and he picks at the rim of his coffee cup. All of the dishes in their house are pristine—there are no divots or cracks to work his fingernail into. He worries at the dried coffee smudged along the edge instead, left there by his lips.

He should say something, give her something for that. Quid pro quo.

“Adam is my…” He finds he doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. There are no words for what Adam is to him. _Boyfriend_ sounds flimsy and cheap. _Child_ is too difficult to explain. Eventually, he just shrugs. “He’s Adam. You’ll meet him when he gets back from vacation. You’d like him.”

“I’m sure I will,” Alana says, with a face that suggests she expects to do anything but.

* * *

Alana joins them for dinner that evening. It’s a sedate affair, although more elaborate than the dinners they’ve had lately. Hannibal seems pleased for the opportunity to cook for a guest. He’s a gracious host, presenting dishes with a flourish just as he did in Baltimore. Will watches him come alive. He feels the quiet thrum of satisfaction buzzing just below the surface of Hannibal’s skin as if it were his own.

He’s terribly jealous.

They eat boeuf à la mode with porcini mushrooms, roasted sweet potatoes and herbed butter parsnips. Alana picks up her fork after only a second’s hesitation. They both watch as she brings the food to her mouth in small, tidy bites, taking care to avoid smudging her lipstick. She doesn’t touch her portion of meat. Neither of them really expected her to.

“So, Alana, how did you find your trip?” Hannibal asks.

Alana takes a deep sip of her wine. “You know exactly how it was, Hannibal. Unpleasant. Unplanned.” She leans on the last word, locking eyes with him.

He meets her gaze and smiles politely, unperturbed. “Well, Will and I are both happy to see you. I’m grateful that you could make the trip on such short notice.”

She doesn’t bite back at him. She doesn’t taunt or assert herself. Her knuckles are white where they’re wrapped around the handle of her cutlery. Will wonders if she has the urge to drive the knife into Hannibal’s neck. He wonders if she has the nerve, after all these years. Time has changed all of them.

“Which one of us would you kill first?” Will asks. He nods at the steak knife clutched in her hand. “If you were going to use that.”

Alana loosens her fingers as though she’s just realized she’s holding a poisonous snake. Tthe utensil falls to her plate with a clatter.

Will looks to Hannibal, his everpresent gauge for what’s enough, what’s too far. Clearly he hasn’t gone too far this time. Hannibal looks nothing but amused, good humor sparkling in his eyes. He’s interested in the turn their conversation has taken. Pleased, even.

Alana clearly expects the conversation to keep moving, for Will’s lapse in decorum to be neatly swept away by Hannibal’s grace. No one is inclined to oblige her in this. She swallows, the line of her throat bobbing as she takes another sip of wine. She’s stalling, but they give her this. It’s a terrible thing to be so alone in a den full of wolves.

“Will,” she says finally.

Hannibal speaks first. He tilts his head, interested. “Why?”

“I’d like to take something from you. I’d like to watch you lose something important.”

Will’s mouth twists in a smile. Maybe she’s learned something after all.

* * *

The house is quiet. Alana's tucked away in one of the guest rooms, and he and Hannibal lie face to face, breathing each other’s air. The bed feels too big without Adam between them. Will wishes Hannibal would hurt him tonight. Simple kinds of hurt are so much easier to bear than the solid, unrelenting gnaw of betrayal by slow degrees.

“Why did you bring her here?” Will asks. “A second opinion? That’s unlike you. I didn’t think your ego would allow it.”

“You’re losing time again, my dear. You haven’t been sleeping.”

“Are you so concerned about me?”

“Yes,” Hannibal says.

“I haven’t been taking my meds,” Will offers, a confidence earned and freely given. Reciprocal truth. And besides, Hannibal has been kind to him lately.

“I know,” Hannibal says, smoothing a hand through Will’s hair with such tender affection that it makes him itch. He kisses Will softly. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Call me a shrink, apparently. Torture me forever.”

He can’t see the wounded light flash across Hannibal’s face in the dark, but he can feel Hannibal’s hurt in the subtle tightening of his fingers. He doesn’t need to see it. Knowing it’s there is enough.

He knows it hurt. That’s why he said it.

* * *

He can’t quite figure out why Alana doesn’t run. He idly wonders what threats Hannibal whispered in her ear to get this exact result. He could guess, if he cared to, reconstruct it in his mind until he could see in perfect clarity the gruesome violence Hannibal doubtless offered to wreak on her family—intestines strung like streamers from a ceiling fan, the most gruesome kind of party; he chooses not to.

She’s here. She doesn’t run. That’s all that really matters as far as either of them are concerned.

Their therapy sessions are unbearable. It’s been days and their impasse has yet to break. Alana is dressed just how Will remembers her, like the neatly-coiffed, sharp-edged head of the BSCHI. He wonders if she’d like to see him rotting behind glass there, both him and Hannibal, or if the time for that has passed. Maybe at this point she’d prefer a neater end—Mason comes to mind. Maybe at this point she’d just prefer to see them dead.

“How are you feeling today, Will?”

She always asks the same question.

“Fine,” he always lies. “You don’t have to do this, you know. Pretend this is normal, that you’re my doctor and this is your office, and these are our appointments. You can just,” he makes a vague hand gesture. “Do whatever you want, and I’ll tell Hannibal that you’re the model therapist to my recalcitrant patient.”

She smiles, polite and tight-lipped. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Fear?”

“Experience.” She uncrosses her legs and crosses them in the other direction. No matter what she says, she’s afraid. He can feel it simmering beneath her skin. “Tell me about Abigail.”

Will tips his head back and regards her through slitted eyes. The world is easier when he doesn’t have to see so much of it, the input clamoring against the visions he sees behind his eyelids. “There’s nothing much to say about Abigail. Abigail is dead.”

“Do you still talk to her?” Alana asks.

He can see Abigail shrugging out of the corner of his eye.

“She’s sad,” Abigail says. “She misses her family. She’s scared that he’ll kill them if you don’t give them what he wants.”

‘He probably will, and what’s it to me?’ rests perched on the tip of his tongue. He wants to say that’s none of his business. That Hannibal will do whatever he likes, and it’s not Will’s _job_ to save lives anymore. He’ll leave the savior complex for some other poor sap. But he can’t say a word without giving more away than he cares to, so he ignores Abigail and lets the blatantly manipulative pathos of her words sink into his skin like acid.

“Sometimes,” Will says, answering Alana instead. “Lately.”

He thinks it’s interesting that he can’t see any worlds where he and Alana met a different end, none where they ended together. She was always for Margot, in every world. The thought twitches the corner of his lip in sympathy. What a horrible fate, to be so beholden to another. Not even he and Hannibal were so thoroughly cursed.

He’s moved to pity, and maybe that’s why he offers, “Tell me your diagnosis, and I’ll tell you everything.”

“Wow,” Abigail says where she’s leaning against the wall. “You big softie.” She’s playing with one of Hannibal’s expensive _objets d__’art,_ and half of Will is preoccupied waiting for the crash.

Alana studies Will’s face, looking for the trick.

_It__’s not there,_ he could tell her. _It__’s here, in this world. It’s here all around us._

He doesn’t, though. He lets her look, lets her follow his gaze to the point where it ends, where it surely seems like he’s gazing at nothing. Abigail really is going to break Hannibal’s stupid statue at this rate, and he has to bite his tongue to keep from telling her to cut it out.

“Okay,” Alana says at last. “You have yourself a deal.”

* * *

The dreams are worse when Adam is away, as if Adam is a talisman against bad dreams. Will’s never sure why that should be so, but even he can’t deny that he hasn’t been sleeping well since Adam left. He tosses in bed, restless despite the way Hannibal grasps him in his sleep, as if trying to anchor him. Some days he resents Hannibal’s easy rest.

Tonight he wakes up gasping. Hannibal is already awake. He clicks on the bedside lamp, flooding the room with warm, orange light that makes Will squint. The light chases away the lingering shades lurking in the dark, beating them back to the far corners of Will’s mind. Hannibal looks at him with the blend of exhaustion and pity that’s too at home on his face these days.

“Another nightmare?” he asks.

Will doesn’t answer. He just turns his face into Hannibal’s chest and breathes in the vivid, solid scent of him. He wishes he felt as safe here as he did in his dreams. He wishes Hannibal’s presence could make him feel comforted as it should. As it stands, it’s no comfort at all, and Will pushes away from him, frustrated, before too long.

“Will?”

Hannibal doesn’t try to come for him, doesn’t follow him out of the room. He wouldn’t, after so long. Will has no way of saying what’s wrong, so he doesn’t even try.

He floats through the hallway like a ghost, feeling nearly as insubstantial as Abigail who pads along beside him.

“You should be nicer to Hannibal,” she says. “It’s not his fault that we’re like this.”

“From where I’m standing, it’s _exactly_ his fault. Who knows that better than us?”

“You know what I mean,” Abigail says. Somehow her very _voice_ has the quality of an eye roll, and he wonders if that’s an exclusively teenage power. He has to swallow against the burn of bile when he recalls that she will be a teenager forever, perfectly preserved in amber, and again when he remembers why. Abigail is completely unperturbed, unaffected by his sudden influx of bone-crunching guilt.

“It’s not his fault that I’m like this, all Casper-spooky. It’s not his fault you’re crazy.”

“I’m not crazy,” Will says.

“Then what are you?”

_“Tired.”_

“He loves you, you know,” Abigail says, and suddenly she doesn’t seem like a teenager at all. “Alana, all of this—he does it because he loves you.”

Will snorts. “As if Hannibal can love.”

Abigail stops so suddenly that Will has to pull himself up short to keep from colliding with her. He almost trips over his feet anyway.

“Will.” She gives him a look that makes him feel ashamed. “He’s capable of so much love. Horrible, screaming love that tears his heart to ribbons. Who knows that better than us?”

“I know, I know,” Will sighs.

Abigail looks at him sadly. “Do you?”


	4. Chapter 4

The days trip by, stop-motion jerky until Adam returns. The three of them live in a powder keg, all compression and bottleneck, resentment simmering just under the surface. Some days, Will feels like he could stick his hand in the slipstream and pull it out trailing blood.

They have dinner together. Will does therapy. Outside of that, Alana avoids them both, and Hannibal walks around radiating quiet pleasure, seemingly thrilled at another chance to play puppetmaster. Will leaves them to it.

He misses Adam like burning, every second of every day, but he’s surprised to feel a twinge of longing for Nigel. Hurt, damaged Nigel with his blunt, bloody hands and snarling mouth. Will sees something he recognizes in Nigel, something raw and wounded. Nigel can hurt him in ways that even Hannibal can’t. Cleaner ways. Ways devoid of the stinging, bleeding edge of  _ love. _ Will misses it when he’s gone.

Rain falls against the window panes, and gloom stains the whole earth grey. The sky’s been at it for days. It’s like living underwater. Will touches a hand to his cheek, watching the streak of borrowed tears flow down his reflection’s face.

It seems that it’s only been a second. He blinks, and Adam returns.

Adam stands in the doorway wearing a sweet, shy smile. For a terrible, heart-sinking moment, Will isn’t sure if he’s real. If any of it ever was. The world seems to tilt on its axis.

“Hi, Will,” Adam says.

“Hey, baby,” Will says around the lump in his throat.

They meet somewhere in the middle. Adam’s skin is solid under his hands, warmer than he remembers. He takes in the little details, comforted by the imperfections, all the ways the man standing before him fails to match up exactly with the Adam in his mind, like a superimposed image that doesn’t quite fit. The small things that mean he’s living and human, that Will couldn’t make this up.

Adam has grown pale while he’s been gone, his summer tan fading to a pale, peachy hue. Will wonders how long it’s been, if it felt as strange and endless for Adam as it did for him. He skims his fingers along the fading bruises over Adam’s throat, the sunset colors mottled against soft flesh, Nigel’s love layered over him. Adam’s breath hitches, and oh, Will loves him.

He fits their lips together, sliding his hands down to cup Adam’s ass and draw them closer. Stars turn align and planets turn; they kiss.

They break apart, and Will buries his face in Adam’s neck. “I missed you.”

He breathes deep, inhaling the scent of sweat and rain, the lingering smell of commercial airlines and hotel shampoo. Will has the sudden urge to throw him on the bed and lick every part of him clean, to rub his body against Adam like a cat, until he smells of nothing but Will.

Nothing but home.

Will settles for walking them backwards until Adam’s knees hit the bed, and they collapse over the mattress with a soft grunt. Will is sitting atop him. He kisses every part of Adam he can reach—cheeks, eyelids, mouth, ears. He wants all of it at once. He tugs at Adam’s shirt until Adam obliges, stripping it off so Will can mouth along the length of his collarbone, so he can fit his fingers into the hollows of Adam’s ribs.

“I missed you too,” Adam says, twining his fingers in Will’s hair.

Adam scoots back on the bed until they can both fit. He lies back and looks up at Will through oceanic eyes blown dark with lust. He looks like a Dionysian worshiper. He looks like a feast. Adam lets his knees fall open so Will can fit between them, pressing their erections together as he leans down to kiss Adam again, probing his mouth with long, languid strokes of his tongue.

“You’ve gotten so pale,” Will murmurs, pressing a chaste kiss to the rosy bloom of Adam’s cheek. “I can see you blush.”

“It was cold in San Francisco. I’m not used to the cold anymore. I missed the sun.”

Will drags his fingernails down the length of Adam’s arms, watching goosebumps rise in their wake. “Want me to warm you up, baby?”

“Yes,” Adam sighs, tilting his head up for another kiss.

Will undoes Adam’s pants by feel alone, the better to keep kissing him. They come up for air just so Adam can lift his hips and push his pants down, so Will can stand up and quickly shuck his trousers. He climbs back over Adam, and they both groan at the first heated contact of skin on naked skin.

“Is the sun all you missed?” Will teases.

“Nope. I missed having sex with you too.” Adam neatly flips them over with a grin. He’s smiling down at Will with his long curls forming a curtain around his face. Will reaches up and pushes it behind his ears, taking the time to caress the curve of a cheek.

Will knows better than to needle at Adam about Nigel. Another time he might have done it anyway, but today it’s rainy and grey. The rain patters heavily against the window, and Will feels like he’s on the inside of a glass bottom boat, suspended in time.

“I can do something about that,” Will says, sucking his fingers into his mouth and trailing them down to grip the both of them. The friction is just this side of too much, tight and a little dry, but the hot, hard length of Adam’s cock feels perfect when it slides against his. He jerks them slow and steady, watching the expressions that flit over Adam’s face, the way his mouth grows slack and easy with pleasure.

“Tell me you love me,” Will says.

He curves his hand so his thumb slides across the slippery glans of Adam’s cock on the next stroke. Adam arches into it, crying out.

“Ah! I love you.” He bends forward so he can rest his forehead against Will’s. “I love you, I love you.”

Adam comes first, spilling over Will’s hand and cock and panting against his mouth. Will follows after, wet cheeks and all.

It really is raining everywhere.

* * *

“Why does Hannibal have you on clozapine and fluoxetine, Will?” The question is perfectly straightforward, Alana perfectly guileless.

“Because haloperidol made me yell and throw things.”

“When did you start taking antipsychotic medication?”

“When Hannibal became convinced I was a danger to myself.” Will chuckles to himself. “He liked that I was a danger to others.”

“Were you? Dangerous to yourself.”

“Not on purpose.” Will’s mouth pulls into a small smile. “I wouldn’t eat or sleep. It stands to reason it would have killed me eventually.”

“You don’t eat enough now,” Alana says. 

Will swallows, looking away. Abigail isn’t here today. His sessions with Alana bore her. Clearly she’s decided she has better things to do. Will envies her that boredom. The ability to disappear.

“I eat enough. I haven’t gotten scurvy again.”

He throws  _ again _ out like a challenge, leaving it on the floor to see if Alana will pick it up. He’d offered to tell her everything, but he’s not above a little sport. Hannibal has rubbed off on him in too many ways. He likes to have  _ fun _ now.

If Alana notices the bait, she leaves it alone, maybe scenting danger on the wind. Will is only mildly disappointed.

* * *

There’s a world where Abigail [lived](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20367835). A world where the best he had to give her really was good enough, where she grew up beautiful and strong. She cut her hair and dyed it blonde, bright as a beacon, daring the world to look at her scars.

If he closes his eyes, it almost feels the same. The ocean sounds the same everywhere, whether it’s a Central American shore or a beach in Palermo. Frying meat smells the same wherever you are.

“I’m not her, you know,” Abigail says.

“You know enough of her to think that you’re not. That makes you,” he makes a wobbling, so-so gesture with one hand. “The same person, ish.”

She wrinkles her nose at him. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Another time, he might have come back with a snappy rejoinder. He does take pleasure in cryptic words. It’s not all confusion—or not only just. Today he’s just tired. Too tired to bother. He feels like he’s lived so many lives, and his head aches.

“Sorry,” he murmurs.

She looks alarmed. This isn’t part of it, he knows. He’s not playing his part right. He’s going off-script. She touches his arm, and he’s surprised when her fingers don’t go straight through. They’re doing corporeality today.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she says. “I didn’t mean—”

He shakes his head, cutting her off. Rude. “I know.” She’s still wearing that flinching, worried expression so he tries again,  _ use your words. _ “I know. It’s not your fault. I’m just—”

“Tired,” she finishes.

He blows out the heaviest breath. “Yeah.”

She slides her hand down to his and threads their fingers together. She looks out the window. “Aren’t we all?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters for you today. I know I rarely reply to comments. It's never because I don't care. Writing stories and talking to people about them seem to be mutually exclusive for me at this point in time. I pick telling stories, but I'm so glad you're here. 🖤

There’s a river of stars. They gleam like a nebula, swirling colors that shine in the dark. Everything is limned with light. He’s alone here. He sees himself only in outlines, the way his black hole flesh sucks in the luminescence and does not give it back.

He can’t stay here for long. He’ll destroy everything he touches if he does. Still, it’s comforting to linger, to soak in the stillness of this place. It’s stuffed full with the quiet of rest, of living things sleeping that might wake still. Potential buzzes and hums below the surface. It lacks the definite silence of the grave. Standing here, he has the sense that so many things might still happen.

He holds still for a small eternity. The picture starts to bend, edges blurring and fizzing out of focus. Time to go, then.

Will wakes with a gasp in a dawn-dark room, dark matter still clinging to his ankles, burning him with cold.

* * *

Breakfast is a quiet affair. People talk around him, but their chatter blends into the background, going liquid-smooth until the words lose all sense of form. They’re sounds only, passing over him like a storm. He looks up to watch the shapes their mouths make. There’s something comical about it, like watching a badly dubbed movie. Adam looks at him with concern, and Will lets him.

There’s a world where this happened all the time. Two people at the table instead of four. One mug of coffee, one of tea. Adam’s never cared for coffee, the bitter bite, the acrid aftertaste that lingers for hours.

_ Adam is talking to him, and Will realizes he’s zoned out. _

_ “Sorry,” he says. “Can you repeat that?” _

_ Adam blinks at him owlishly. _

_ “I asked what your plans are for today,” Adam says slowly. _

_ “Oh. I don’t know.” Will scratches the back of his head. “I hadn’t really gotten that far. I was thinking of taking the dogs for a run and seeing how it goes from there.” _

_ “That sounds nice.” _

_ “Do you have to work today?” Will asks, wincing even as the words leave his mouth. He hasn’t been keeping track of the days. He used to be better at paying attention to Adam’s schedule. If Adam begrudges him the lapse in attention, he doesn’t show it. _

_ “A little, but nothing I can’t do from home. I wasn’t planning on going to the office today, although if you can keep the dogs out of my study, I would appreciate it.” _

_ “Of course,” Will says. _

_ They’re both done eating. Will doesn’t remember when that happened. He can barely remember tasting his oatmeal, but it’s gone all the same, the bowl scraped clean, nothing but bits of starch clinging to the edges. He takes their dishes to the sink and fills them with water, watching the sun filter through the stream as it pours. The faucet spits water at his shirt, and he resolves to fix it later. After he gets back from the park, maybe. _

_ He doesn’t realize he’s zoned out again until he hears Adam say his name. _

_ “Sure,” Will says, replying automatically. “I love you too.” _

_ Adam kisses him on the cheek and doesn’t frown, so he supposes that was the right thing to say. Adam goes upstairs to work, the sound of his footsteps growing fainter and fainter as they creak on the stairs. _

_ Will breathes a small sigh of relief when he’s alone. This place—he’d like to keep it. _

_ He’s so tired. _

* * *

“I met Adam today.”

They meet for therapy in one of the unused bedrooms upstairs. This house is big in a way Will has never gotten used to.

“Any first impressions?” Will asks, seemingly bored with her, bored with Hannibal, bored with everyone. Smug and above it all.

Alana swallows against the rage percolating in her chest, the anger that filters through her veins. She digs blood-red nails into her own palms.  _ Careful, now. _

“He seemed nice,” she says. “He doesn’t like eye contact either.”

Will’s mouth tips up in a fond smile. “That’s Adam.”

Alana clears her throat. “He told me you raped him. Do you want to tell me about that?”

Going straight for the jugular. It doesn’t bother him. He knows what he is, what he’s done. He’s not trying to hide from anyone, least of all himself. Not anymore. Not for a long time.

“Not really,” Will says, but he already knows that he will. A deal’s a deal.

“Do you want to know what I think?” Alana asks.

Will sits up a little in his chair, leaning forward. “Tell me.”

“I think you’re scared and selfish, and you don’t care who gets hurt as long as you get what you want.”

“And what is it you assume that I want, Doctor Bloom?”

Her lip twitches at the title. An angry tic that gives so much away.

“To hurt Hannibal,” she says, leaning back in her chair.

“I love Hannibal,” Will says flatly.

“In my experience, when it comes to the both of you, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

He has the shuddering, undeniable need to hide Adam from Alana. What they have—what the two of them are— feels like something that needs to be kept safe from prying eyes, tucked away warm and remote in his chest.

Will lets the conversation spiral out in another direction instead, eyes softening to take her in. “Do you want to hear about what happens to you and Margot?”

Her fear rises to a fever pitch, sharp and vivid underneath her hard carapace. “We’re not here to talk about Margot. Please don’t make me tell you again.”

He waves her words away, insubstantial as cobwebs. His smile widens in all its misshapen, horror-show glory. “I don’t mean what Hannibal would do to them. I mean what happens to them on the strings.” He lets his head fall against his shoulder. “Don’t you want to know how the story ends?”

“What strings, Will?”

There it is, the unbelief. The tone of voice that inevitably comes out, the one that suggests that Will is the unreliable narrator of his own life, not to be trusted,  _ unstable. _ The word comes back to haunt him like a dim melody, discordant, twisted out of shape as it echoes down the halls of time.

He waves her off again, tired. Just suddenly so tired. He’s ready to be done.

He claws the words out anyway, a public service, an offering for a bargain. Abigail would be proud, probably.

“You’re one of the unlucky ones. Not even a broken back could save you from your fate. Not even a shattered body. Love is a disease,” he murmurs. He closes his eyes and turns it over in his mind.

It’s the truest thing he’s ever said, it just might be.

* * *

He's outside again.

“Why do you come to me?” Nigel asks. He’s stubbing out a cigarette against the sandy brick that makes up the floor of their back patio. 

Will doesn’t say anything for a long time. He just pulls up a chair and sits beside Nigel, so close the outsteps of their feet are almost touching. Nigel lights up another cigarette hot on the heels of the first, and Will puts his hand out, silently asking.

Nigel takes a deep drag, staring out at the ridge of dirt at the edge of their property. Beyond it is the ocean, although you can’t see it from here. Will can smell it, the fresh, fishy smell of salt that underpins every moment of his waking life, even his dreams. Nigel passes the cigarette over.

Will inhales, curling his lip around the slightly damp filter. The dirty, crisp heat of tobacco smoke burns his lungs. He closes his eyes, tipping his head back as he exhales slowly. He takes another drag before handing it back.

“Your husband’ll be pissed that I’m letting you smoke.”

“Letting me.” Will lets out a harsh snort.

“So he does speak,” Nigel says to no one in particular. The crackle of burning paper and leaves of tobacco. “You know I don’t like that cryptic shit.”

“You don’t like me either, but you haven’t left yet.” Will gestures at the unseen horizon. “It’s a big beach.”

Nigel shrugs and doesn’t answer.

“I come to you because you’re easy. Because this is easy. It’s clean, like a broken bone snapped plain in two.”

“Fucker,” Nigel says, but without much heat.

Will shrugs.

“There’s a lady here. That shrink.”

Will grunts.

“She’s pretty.”

“She’s married.”

“So are you,” Nigel says.

Will takes the cigarette back, plucking it from Nigel’s mouth without asking. “She’s the other kind of married—to a normal person, with a normal relationship. I don’t like your odds.”

“No killers for her, huh?”

Will stubs out the smoldering butt before it can burn his fingers. “I didn’t say that.” The distant roar of the ocean paves over the empty spaces in their conversation. They’re still not big on talking. “So what do you say? Got time for me?”

“Fucker,” Nigel says again, but it isn’t no.

* * *

Sometimes it gets exhausting, being the only one who  _ knows. _ He says it too much, he knows, complains too often about being wrung out, but he only says it to the shades in his head, and they never complain. They feel it with him, soaking up the remnants of his psychic detritus, everything he can’t bleed out fast enough. He feels it trying to choke him.

Chiyoh isn’t friendly, but at least she understands. Occasionally she’ll sit on the shore, still done up in all her layers, a stiff winter coat protecting her from the oceanic breeze. He’s never seen her in the summer, Will realizes. Her image blurs as the tropical heat all around them refuses to accept it; as if it too knows that she belongs in a different time.

But his mind is set on this version, the one he’d met first. The one that’s all straight-backed and rigid, wearing her dignity like armor. He can’t picture her in a bathing suit. He remembers the bathing suit Molly used to favor, a two piece in a bright russet brown. He wonders if she still owns it. It’s funny to think that a bathing suit might have outlived him in Molly’s life—but it’s only funny if you say it in the way that means sad.

Will’s kissed Chiyoh, but he can’t imagine her smile.

Today she’s feeling indulgent. She lets him talk and doesn’t try to interrupt. She doesn’t leave once he gets going.

“Some people are pillars of reality,” Will says. “They prop the whole thing up.”

“And what makes you think I would consent to be one of the pillars of your reality?” Chiyoh asks.

“I don’t think you would, or that you do. You just are. Truth doesn’t have the decency to ask for consent—it’s kind of a bitch that way.”

She stares at him straight in the face. Alana still has trouble doing that, and Abigail avoids it out of concern for his feelings. Chiyoh has no such compunctions, and she looks until she makes Will uncomfortable.

“I don’t believe you,” she says finally. “I find it hard to accept that you believe yourself. Hannibal may coddle you, but I will do no such thing.”

“Cassandra sat at the gates, you know. She cried about the war, and no one believed her until it was too late.”

“Do you style yourself Cassandra, then? Are you trying to prevent a war?”

Her voice is mocking, as it should be. Will just shrugs.

“I just know things. I know what to be afraid of.”

They look out at the black seawater together. The wind ruffles the collar of her coat, tendrils of cold creeping in around her throat, the only place where her skin is exposed. The sky is dark although it’s only noon. Storm clouds gather in the sky. It does paint an ominous picture.

Chiyoh sighs. “Who are the others in this pantheon of yours?”

Will smiles like a corpse and shakes his head. Some things are too terrible to be said aloud.

“Let me guess—Adam, Hannibal, and Nigel. Abigail was replaced. Four pillars for the four corners of the world.”

Will lets his head slant against his shoulder, and Chiyoh snorts indelicately.

“How narcissistic of you. Has it occurred to you that the world doesn’t revolve around you? That it is bigger than the small portion you witness?”

“Of course,” Will says. “But that doesn’t change what’s true.”

She turns away and watches the waves.

She’s tired of him, he knows. Soon she’ll probably leave. He won’t miss her when she does, but it’s almost nice to have the company.


	6. Chapter 6

“Why do you want a baby?”

They’re lying in bed. Hannibal is elsewhere. Hannibal is always elsewhere these days, and Will wonders if he’s made their bedroom such an unwelcoming place. He’s an unsafe space, the owner of an uninhabitable heart.

Adam has noticed his preoccupation. Everyone has, although only Alana has broached the subject with him directly.

That’s her job, he assumes. To poke and prod at the swollen tissue of him, the parts that have begun to get infected, tissue necrotizing and falling away, giving off the sweet smell of rot in its decay.

Hannibal humors him. Nigel sneers—he doesn’t care about Will’s  _ issues, _ but he likes what they do to Will. Likes fucking Will flat on his back, legs stretched out like  _ yeah, fucking take it, little bitch.  _ Adam—

Well, Adam is bringing it up now, which means he brought it up then. Time is a lizard forever eating its own tail, perfect and unholy.

Will still takes the time to choose his words carefully. Not because he’s afraid that Adam will judge him, but because he knows that he won’t. The opportunity to lay oneself bare, it’s as good as gold in this house. As deadly as knives.

Will rubs his hand over his belly, the spare hollowness of it bookended the ridges of his hip bones.

“I just want to be whole,” he says at last. “I want what I had before.”

Adam looks at him, blue eyes thoughtful. He seems sad and not sad all at once. “Everyone wants that.” He takes Will’s hand and pulls it away from its absentminded track. “I want that.” He nestles deeper into blankets that smell like them both, content in all his oceanic sadness. Will wishes he could keep Adam like this, preserved in glass, forever immobile and perfect. “But nobody can have it.”

“Reality is a travesty.”

Adam shrugs.

“What would you have, if you could get things back?”

“My dad,” Adam says without having to think about it. “My mom. Beth. Nigel. Myself.”

The ceiling fan hums.

“Nigel is a good man,” Will says. “He’s good for you.”

“Yes,” Adam agrees. “Maybe it’s good that we can’t keep all the things that we lost. Maybe it’s safer. It would be so crowded. You’d find things again and again, and you’d have to keep them all. How would you breathe?”

“Maybe suffocation is better. Knowing what you’re missing—it’s so sharp it could kill you.”

“Maybe,” Adam says.

“Yeah, maybe.”

* * *

“I’d like to try hypnotherapy on you, if you’re amenable.”

“You want to go fishing around in my brain again?”

“I think it might help both of us find clarity,” Hannibal says.

Will shrugs. “If you like. Do I have to do anything?”

“Make yourself comfortable.”

Will does as he’s told. He sits back in his chair, letting himself slump into the cradle of its plush leather. He considers toeing off his shoes, but only for a second. He’s been on his feet all day. At this point they must smell something like death, so he rolls his neck and lets his head droop a little instead. He breathes in and exhales on a sigh that seems to pull him earthward.

“Are you comfortable?”

“Sure.”

“Good.” He hears a slight smile in Hannibal’s voice. “Focus on your breath and on the sound of my voice. You’re perfectly safe here. Safe to relax, to let your mind wander.”

Letting his mind wander when instructed to do so turns out to be a tall ask. It has the same quality of suddenly becoming aware of your breathing—what should be an automatic process becomes stilted and awkward in light of consciousness, changed on a quantum level by the act of being observed. He thinks of his dogs waiting for him back in Wolf Trap. He’d found a new one the other day; he hopes she hasn’t pissed on the rug. His nose itches, and he fights down the compulsion to scratch it. He fidgets in his seat. He thinks about Jack and the crime scene photos waiting on his laptop at home.

He thinks about the ocean.

“What do you see when you close your eyes?” Hannibal asks.

“There’s a house by the beach. It’s warm and sandy. There’s a fire pit outside. It’s cheerful. Homey.”

“Does somebody live there?”

“We do.”

There’s a pause so imperceptible that Will might have imagined it. Maybe he did.

“Are we romantically involved, in this vision of yours?”

Will leaves his eyes closed but tilts his head, letting his ear bend toward his shoulder. His brows furrow slightly. “Yes and no. We inch in that direction.” His mouth tips up. “You want it more than I do, but I’m too angry to let you have your way.”

“Anger can be a galvanizing force, a potent instigator of change. Why are you angry?”

“There are so many rivers of blood. I blame you for all of them.”

“Not yourself?”

Will opens his eyes. Licks lips that have begun to chap in the air conditioned room. “No, Doctor. Only you.”

A moment passes between them. There’s a look shared, a moment where Will is sure that any romantic overture he made now would not be denied. He lets it pass.

Hannibal glances at the clock. “And that’s our time,” he says.

He rises to his feet, buttoning his jacket, and Will stands as well. He stretches out the stiffness that settled into his limbs during an hour of inactivity.

“Would you care to join me for dinner?” Hannibal asks, but his heart’s not in it. It’s curious.

Will presses the point to see what happens when he does.

“Pleasantries, Doctor? I’ve never known you to stand on ceremony with me.”

“New territory calls for new scripts. Surely it’s understandable to be caught wrong-footed when the terrain is unfamiliar.”

“Hm,” Will says.

He lingers while Hannibal files away his notes, while he grabs his coat from the rack by the door. Hannibal turns off the light, and they both walk out together.

“I’ll pass on dinner,” Will says. “But thank you for the offer.”

Hannibal inclines his head. “You’re always welcome at my table.”

Will doesn’t doubt that it’s true. He only doubts whether it’s a good thing. He thinks about saying it, but by then Hannibal has already gotten in his car. Will watches the Bentley pull away, head full of the scent of sea and the sound of waves.

* * *

Fate (or God, the patron saint of stray dogs, or whoever’s in charge these days) does not smile on him. The smell of urine greets him as soon as he enters the door, the sound of eager, skittering paws all around him in the dark. Lucky has definitely pissed on the rug.

He flicks on a light and is greeted by half a dozen grinning canines, tongues lolling, hoping for dinner.

Lucky cowers a few paces behind the rest, ears down, tail between her legs and whining low.

Will tosses his jacket over the back of a chair, getting down on his knees with a groan. The hard floorboards are not kind to them. He reaches out a hand to her. “Hey, girl, it’s okay. Shh, it’s alright. I’m not mad, see?”

She takes a while to be convinced, and Will can’t rightly say he blames her. There are scars all down her back and right side, mostly obscured by long fur, but he can feel them when he touches her.

Finally she comes closer and sniffs at his outstretched hand, licking it softly.

He smiles and curls a hand around her head, scratching gently behind her ears. “Your last owner was a bastard, wasn’t he? Yes he was. I’m sorry I was gone for so long.”

Unfortunately, his imagination extends to this too. Will can picture it so clearly. Her owner would have used a belt, a slipper, anything that was near at hand. Lucky is such a sweet dog, patient and even-tempered. She’s the last dog any reasonable person should ever want to hit.

He imagines her previous owner as one of the victims in the photos on his computer, insides laid open, gleaming and red.

Will gives Lucky a last few pats before levering himself to his feet with a sigh. His stomach grumbles loudly, and he spends a while zoned out, standing in front of the open refrigerator, half-leaning on the door and staring into its emptiness. Maybe he should’ve taken Hannibal up on dinner after all.

He takes out the lone jar of half-eaten pasta sauce. He can’t remember when he bought it. He unscrews the cap and gives it a sniff, grimacing at the sharp scent of mold. He rinses it in the sink and tosses it in the trash. Not pasta, then.

He swings the refrigerator door shut.

He gives up. He’s more tired than hungry. He feeds his dogs and lets them out before peeling off his shoes and pants and falling into bed. He’ll have to let them back in, in a second. His mind drifts of its own accord, back to the sound of ocean waves and the looming beach house he’d dreamed up. Three bedrooms, he thinks. No, four. Hannibal would want the extra space. It’s a strange thought to have about someone he’s not romantically involved with. Someone he—as far as he can tell—has no interest in becoming romantically involved with.

Still, it’s a nice fantasy. It involves significantly less blood and death than most of his daydreams, so he’s not inclined to be picky.

He doesn’t realize he’s halfway asleep until he’s startled awake by the sound of paws scratching at the front door. He lets the dogs in, checking to see that they’re all accounted for before locking the door. He flips off the light and gets back into bed.

The dogs make little sounds, nails scratching against the tile as they mill about, the rustle of a bed as they make themselves comfortable. The occasional wuff or grumble as they negotiate around each other. It’s nice to have something filling the silence. The sounds of home.

It soothes Will, grounds him like nothing else. He is fully himself here, now. He lets out a sigh of his own before turning over and burrowing deeper into the covers. His body aches pleasantly, and for once, sleep comes easy.

He loses himself to a deep and dreamless rest.


	7. Chapter 7

Nigel sets some ground rules for their trip. The first is  _ no talking about those fucking cannibals. _

Adam frowns. “They’re part of my life now, Nigel. How can I not talk about them?”

Nigel sighs. “I get that, darling. Trust me, I do, but the point of vacation is to get away from the everyday stuff, yeah? It’s to take a break. Hard to take a break if you bring all your stuff with you.”

“I’m only bringing one suitcase of luggage. That’s hardly all my stuff.”

“Metaphorical stuff. Mental stuff.”

Adam chews on his lip, thinking. “Okay,” he says at last.

“Okay?” Nigel can feel the relieved grin spreading over his face.

Adam nods. “Mmhm. On one condition.”

“What’s that?” Nigel asks, dread already starting to creep its way back in.

“You don’t drink or smoke for the entire time we’re in California.”

Nigel groans. “Baby, that’s a tall order, and I’m not sure you know what you’re asking. You wouldn’t like me when I’m jonesing for that stuff. I’m grouchy and mean.”

“You’re grouchy anyway,” Adam points out.

“I’ll show you grouchy.” Nigel growls and nuzzles his face into Adam’s neck, tickling him with his stubble until Adam shoves him away. He’s allowed, today. Adam laughs, lips turning up at the corners. “Let me keep the cigarettes, and I’ll swear off the booze until we get back.”

Adam considers this for a moment. “Okay. Deal.”

* * *

On the way to the airport, Adam comes up with another rule, and that rule is “please stop calling them ‘those fucking cannibals;’ their names are Will and Hannibal.” Nigel balks at that far more than he had about going dry for the foreseeable future, but in the end he’d agreed. He really was entirely whipped for this kid. Fucking hell.

_ Those fucking cannibals _ drive them into San Jose, although they stop short of actually taking them to the airport.

“It doesn’t hurt to be cautious,” Hannibal says by way of conversation.

Nigel ignores him and stares out the window. A muscle in his jaw twitches from the effort of keeping his mouth shut. Something touches his hand, and Nigel looks down to see Adam sliding his own hand into Nigel’s.

They stop in the parking lot of a sleepy cafe that’s quiet save for the occasional old man wandering through the glass doors. Hannibal helps him unload their suitcases from the trunk, and Nigel doesn’t say thank you.

He stands awkwardly off to the side as Will and Adam say goodbye. They do that thing they do—that creepy mind meld thing where they seem to understand each other without words. They speak in hushed tones, and finally Adam throws his arms around Will and kisses him. Nigel looks away, rage and helplessness warring for supremacy. Rage is easier; he’ll go with rage, if only for his own sanity.

He’s about to break it up when Hannibal stops him. “Wait. Give them a moment.”

“We’ve got a plane to catch.”

It’s true, but not the real reason. Hannibal looks at Nigel like he can see straight through him.

“You have time. You should get a coffee before you go. The beans they use here are excellent, much better than anything you’ll find at the airport.”

Nigel grunts.

Will and Adam take their sweet time saying goodbye.

“Christ, you’d think he was going off to war,” Nigel mutters.

“Adam helps Will.”

Nigel gives him a look.

Hannibal continues, “His presence is soothing to Will, and vice versa. It will be a trying time for them both, I’m sure, being separated.”

“And yet you’re letting us go.”

Hannibal inclines his head. “It’s what Adam wanted.”

Nigel quirks an eyebrow in Hannibal’s direction. He’s got this guy’s number. “You’re no more a saint than I am. You don’t care about that. You’re just happy to have  _ him _ all to yourself again.”

Hannibal looks at him, and Nigel has the sudden strange impression of vertigo. Nigel isn’t sure what it is—a look in his eyes, a twitch of his mouth—but for a moment he finds himself touching his waistband to reassure himself of a gun he no longer has.

But anything dangerous that Nigel might have seen evaporates, and Hannibal simply says, “I’m looking forward to spending time alone with Will, it’s true.”

Nigel can think of other questions he’d like to ask.  _ Why doesn’t it bother you, sharing him? _ or maybe just  _ what the actual fuck is wrong with you— _ there’s a perennial favorite—but he never gets the chance. Will and Adam let go, and Adam turns back to Nigel with a face conspicuously wet with tears.

It makes Nigel uncomfortable, so he just ignores it. “Ready to go, darling?”

Adam nods. “Yes.”

Will and Hannibal get back into the car, and Adam watches them drive away, tears threatening to spill over again. Nigel can’t deal with that right now—can’t deal with comforting a crying Adam over missing his goddamn rapist, so he just asks, “Want to get some coffee?”

Adam sniffs. “I don’t drink coffee.”

“Hot chocolate, then. I could use a coffee.”

Nigel doesn’t wait for Adam to decide yes or no. He pushes his way through the doors of the cafe to the sound of a jangling bell. A pretty waitress looks bored behind the counter, waiting to take their order.

_ “Un café por favor,” _ Nigel orders. He orders the hot chocolate for Adam too. The kid can drink it or not.

They wait a few minutes while the girl behind the counter pours their coffee and froths milk for Adam’s drink. The sun is bright and yellow as it streams through the clean windows. The wooden floor beneath their feet seems to gleam with it. It shouldn’t be awkward, standing here alone with Adam like this, but it is.

The girl hands Nigel their drinks in two paper cups, and Nigel pulls out his wallet to pay, stuffing an extra bill in the tip jar. He passes Adam his drink, a mountain of fluffy white whipped cream peeking over the rim. It occurs to Nigel that he has no idea if Adam likes whipped cream or if it has a texture he hates, but Adam takes a sip and smiles. It leaves a white, foamy mustache behind on his upper lip, and Nigel wipes it off with his thumb.

Adam favors him with a bright smile that makes Nigel feel soft at the edges.

* * *

The soft mood lasts until they get to the airport where all hell breaks loose.

Nigel looks to Adam reflexively as soon as they step through the automatic doors. There are too many people here. It’s bright and loud with the chatter of a multitude of voices, with the overhead speaker droning on about arrivals and departures.

“You alright, darling?” Nigel asks.

Adam nods, mouth pursed and tight-lipped. Nigel sighs and tries to get them through check-in as fast as possible. Adam doesn’t lose it until after Nigel hands their stuff over to the tired-looking attendant behind the counter, clutching reflexively at his bag, even after it’s been tagged and carried off by a woman who looks fed up with everything around her.

“That’s mine. I want it,” Adam says, eyebrows furrowed together.

“I know, but we’ve got to check it in now. C’mon, you’ve been on planes before, yeah? You know how it works. We’ll pick it up when we land in San Francisco. Won’t that be nice?”

“I want it now.”

Nigel takes a deep breath through his nose and tries his very fucking best not to lose his patience. As much as he hates airports—who doesn’t hate airports?—he knows it’s harder for Adam. He knows Adam isn’t doing it on purpose.

The airport attendant waits with pursed lips.

“We’re fine,” Nigel says firmly with a tight smile in her direction. He doesn’t quite miss her rolled eyes as she turns away. “Bitch,” he mutters under his breath.

Adam’s breathing is quick and jerky. He doesn’t comment on Nigel cussing out the flight attendant, doesn’t scold or frown, which doesn’t bode well for his state of mind.

Nigel grabs Adam by the back of the neck and steers him into a corner. Adam visibly relaxes at the tight grip pinching below his hairline, and Nigel swears under his breath because that’s right—his darling likes to be fucking manhandled. That’s apparently a good time to him. Nigel relaxes his grip once they’re out of the flow of pedestrian traffic, and he positions himself in front of Adam, shielding him from the worst of the crowd.

“It’s alright, baby. You’re safe. Take a few big, deep breaths with me, yeah?” He inhales in an exaggerated motion, holds it, then blows the air back out. “Good. Again.” He could really use a fucking cigarette.

“It’s too loud,” Adam says, leaning his head into Nigel’s chest.

“I know,” Nigel says. He hooks an arm around the back of Adam’s head to block out the light more effectively. It seems to work because Adam sighs in relief. He stops short of rubbing Adam’s back. He’s read things—books, articles, since Adam came into his life, and they all suggest that too much extra stimulation will just make a meltdown worse. He focuses on blocking out everything that overwhelms Adam instead, standing still and quiet until Adam pulls back with a shaky breath.

“Feeling a little better?”

Adam nods once with a grimace. “Sorry.”

Nigel slips his hand in Adam’s and squeezes, an echo of what Adam had done for him in the car. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry about.”

Adam gives him a small smile, and for once, it  _ feels _ like everything is going to be okay. He remembers that they’re leaving, heading away from this place, and he feels lighter.

* * *

There’s a strange woman in the house when they get back a few months later, sweating and pale and happier than Nigel’s been in ages. California had done him good. Adam too, if he didn’t count all the times Adam had woken in the middle of the night gasping, the time he’d almost bitten clean through his lip worrying about Will in their absence.

_ Will. _

He meets her in the living room. She’s standing near the window, arms wrapped around herself, elbows in her hands like she’s trying to hold herself together. She’s pretty, from the side. She’s turned away from him, dressed fancy in a long fitted skirt and a thin white top that drapes over her curves in all the right ways. She’s staring out at something beyond the glass, but she turns around when she hears him coming.

From the front, she’s beautiful.

“Who’re you?” Nigel asks.

“Alana Bloom.”

“Sure.” The name means fuck-all to him. She knows it too, but she doesn’t offer anything else.

“Friend of the family?” Nigel asks.

“Not for a long time.”

There’s a plain gold wedding ring on her finger. His eyes are drawn to it when she starts fiddling with it, twisting it absently around her finger. He thinks of Gabi. Misses her with a distant, muted sort of pain, like poking an old bruise.

“Missing someone?”

“More than you could imagine,” Alana says.

Nigel looks toward the stairs where Adam had disappeared as soon as they’d gotten home. He’d be lying if he said he thought Adam was in their room. He knows exactly where Adam is, what he’s doing by now. He always does.

“I wouldn’t count on that,” he says.

“Are you Adam?”

The question startles a bark of laughter out of Nigel. Alana looks at him like she can’t tell why that’s supposed to be funny.

“No, darling. I’m sure you’ll meet him later.” He glances at the pendulum clock hanging from the wall. “At dinner maybe, if they bother to come down. Hannibal usually insists, but he also pretty much lets Will get away with murder, so.” He shrugs.

Alana looks like she wants to ask if the murder is literal, and Nigel figures she must know them pretty well after all.

He sticks out his hand. He does  _ have _ manners, even if he seldom cares to use them. “Nigel.”

She takes it without hesitation. Her hands are smooth and cool, her grip surprisingly firm. Good girl. “Nice to meet you, Nigel.”

He snorts. “Now that’s a fucking lie.”

Alana cracks a smile at last—just a small one. She really is fucking pretty.

Her face changes as though she’s just thought of something. “Do you smoke?”

* * *

They end up down by the shore, smoking two of the local cigarettes Nigel gets whenever one of them goes into town. They’re stale and a little crumpled after months of sitting at the bottom of his bag. He lights Alana’s first before cupping his hand around the flame and breathing in.

It’s the first cigarette he’s had in months, and it feels fucking good. He tries not to think about the reason  _ why _ it’s the first cigarette he’s had in months, that he’d done it for Adam—Adam who’s currently upstairs fucking another man while he stands outside and twiddles his fucking thumbs. The kid’s got him wrapped around his little finger, and part of Nigel fucking hates it.

He shoves it as far out of his mind as he can. He closes his eyes and takes in the smoke, feeling the warm heat of it curling sweetly inside his lungs.

Alana is good company. Quiet. Calm. Easy to walk with. Nigel opens his eyes to see her staring out at the water, at a point beyond the horizon.

It’s getting late. The sun’s dying rays tint everything orange and gold. It makes her look like a statue, sad and still except for the way the breeze picks up the fabric of her clothes. It streams out behind her like a flag.

She takes a drag of the cigarette and the illusion is shattered. She coughs, eyes tearing up as she hacks up a lung.

“Jesus.”

“Not a smoker, then?”

She laughs. “No, my wife would kill me.”

“Huh. Wife.”

“Yes?” Eyebrow raised like a challenge.

Nigel shakes his head, taking another drag of his cigarette. Far be it from him to give someone shit for being a queer. “Nothing. I just assumed you had a thing with Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dumber in there.”

“Maybe I did.” She doesn’t look at him as she says it. She seems to have gotten her bearings now. She smokes her cigarette without coughing, that same seriousness settling over her like a mantle.

“Which one?” It’s a fucking rude question, but he can’t help asking.

She grins at him, a hint of wicked mischief peering out from behind the severe, cold front of her. “Who says it was one?”

He laughs, loud and long. “Well alright.”

She laughs with him, and it feels good. Feels fucking normal.

When at last their laughter tapers off, leaving nothing but the shushing of the waves, he adds, “Although I have to say, you have shit taste in men.”

She snorts. “Good thing I gave up the habit, then.”

“Yeah,” he says, flicking his cigarette into the water. “Good thing.”

If only he could learn to do the same.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Aos sí](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21312850) by [ninayoshi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninayoshi/pseuds/ninayoshi)


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